Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Mensa- high IQ DS/DD membership

Just wondering whether you would like your DD/DS be a member of mensa??
i was looking other day and found lot of publicity about that

I am a member, so DS already accompanies me to occasional events without needing his own membership. However, should he ever want his own membership, I'd be happy to help him out. In my view, it's just another source of potentially interesting people, and it has a large enough membership and online presence that even those in small or rural areas can find friends and fulfillment.

Ditto. I've contemplated joining other high IQ societies such as Intertel but the size of the membership thing has always been the stopping point. The reason I belong to Mensa is primarily b/c I enjoy the social network and, if there are few other local members, that is a moot point. Dds wil have to be retested @ some point if they want to join b/c I don't have original signatures on IQ tests for them. For now, they can accompany me to any M events of interest, though.

Here is an old thread on this topic: http://giftedissues.davidsongifted.org/BB/ubbthreads.php/topics/50679/1.html

We actually just signed DS7 up about 4 months ago and we are sadly disappointed. We orginally signed up because there was supposed to be a group close to us that had a children's active MENSA group - well we went ahead and paid the sum only to find out that the group is pretty much non-existant and does not plan anything. I contacted our local MENSA chapter and they don't even have a children's coordinator and we were told that they really don't have any children members - with homeschooling, I really don't have any extra time to attempt to volunteer to be a coordinator to try to get something up and running....so to us it was a complete and total waste of money and we will not renew next year.

I haven't really developed any interest because I don't really see the benefit, especially since we have YS and other GT networks.

Is it true that your IQ scores simply have to be in the top 2% of the population? That means that everyone in YS can just submit their scores and $ and they're automatically in? I always thought it was tougher to get into and had more mystique or something, but looking into it, I get the impression that this is just another HG group. (That would probably sound snotty in any other group, but hopefully you all understand what I mean!)

Yeah, you just need scores in the top 2%, and they don't even have to be IQ scores.

OP, I was in Mensa when I was a kid, but it didn't do much for me. I was the only kid in my area, and the adults were generally more on the MG end of the gifted spectrum, so I didn't fit in much better with them than I did with ND folks. But if you are in an area in which there are a lot of kids in Mensa, it might be worth a shot.

It depends on your area. Our area has active kids programming ongoing. And it seems to attract a HG-PG crowd. We don't participate at this time (have nice social outlets closer to home at this point), but have thought about it as a back up if my kids seem like they need more peers.

Kimck has a good point. It would be nice for us to find a local GT childrens' group doing truly unique and interesting things. I re-checked ours, but don't see anything other than some "family friendly potluck" types of events. I'm just so tired of "brag" conversations that I try to steer away unless it's truly going to be beneficial. I think that's what I love the most about this general group and the YS families I've "met." There doesn't really seem to be any more bragging that anyone feels they need to share. The kids can just stand on their own merits and we can freely converse without wondering who's competitive/jealous/etc.

I have an issue with that actually. I just left the national office a msg the other week about how they ought to reconsider taking things like the CogAT since it isn't a controlled test and I've known more than one family who seriously prepped kids for that test either with the help of the school, through tutoring, or through outright cheating by posing as homeschoolers and getting the test online as such and prepping their kid with answers.

And that, too, has been another reason we haven't seen cause to have dds join. The only events they've attended have been two annual gatherings and they did have fun there but not at the kids trek programming. They actually refused to attend the kid programming after the first one. One of my dds thought that a lot of the other kids at the kid programming were loud, obnoxious, and arrogant. They liked some of the adults, though, and really enjoyed playing Werewolf in the evenings.

The adults I've met locally probably mostly range from MG-HG+. The majority of us who get together monthly for coffee or tea are in the HG range, but not PG (me included). We usually have interesting conversations and similar political beliefs and religious beliefs (or lack thereof).